Musician Portraits From the Ottoman Bureaucracy
Minstrel Katibi From Zile
Fikri Soysal, Taner BalcanlıMinstrel Katibi was a district manager who served in the final period of the Ottoman Empire. Katibi, whose real name was Ali, was born in 1863 in the village of C¸ akırc¸alı in Zile, Tokat. Ali studied at Ulu Madrasah for 14 years. It is understood that he grew up in an intellectual environment, given the presence of primary schools, madrasas, non-Muslim schools and a secondary school, along with the Hamidiye library in the center of Zile. This research is related with a lyric journal written by Katibi. In its current form, the book has 92 pages. The cover, prepared in a Hilal printing house, is made of cardboard with a fabric binding, and features no ornamentation, but only pre printed text in the middle, top right and bottom left of the front cover. The book, printed in 1924, remains as an official record. The seal on the side of the 19th page, which is thought to belong to someone from Haji Bektash Veli’s lineage of masters, reads ”Es-Sheikh Abdulatif min’s son ...” It is thought that the text under the zulfikar ¨ dagger seal reads “La feta illa ali la seyfe illa zulfikar ”, although it is somewhat illegible. The book contains 201 poems in total.